authoress

She sat in the room, increasingly worried. She could see what was happening down below. She didn’t have the means to control it. Her siblings had their eyes closed. They were unconcerned. She had never had the means to control it, just to write it. And once she had written, she watched over her stories. They were her own, and yet somehow, they were not. It was as if another hand was writing them. But they felt so real. Like it was her. Hand, another Hand, with a capital H. She believed her stories must be true. After all, the stories came from her. Somewhere, there was a creator. The original storyteller. And even though she had written the stories of all in existence, someone had needed to write hers. She closed her eyes, reached deep into her heart, and inside herself, began to sob. She had always known but never felt what tears were like, until they reached her eyes, and began to fall, thick, and heavy. Loud with great thuds. She looked at her siblings. Eyes still closed. It looked as if they hadn’t heard the drops the way she had. She looked back down. Slate and reed in front her.  She grabbed them, and began to write.

Down below the elements swirled and twirled. The shadow rajah extended his reign to all corners of the globe. The time, which had been coming for a while, was near. And he was excited. His dominion would be long. It would never end. Eternity was his silence. And his time, the time for the rulers of the earth, would change. No more these creatures of flesh and blood, baked from clay. Gone would be the time of their rule. It was now time for him and his, creatures made of fire, which if we were being honest, were infinitely better anyways.

The board continued unperturbed. The light it cast was now stronger, before it had been imperceptible, now it was bright and powerful. It cast a glow on the things that remained nearby, it danced with, and seemed to give power to the shadows that circled the board. The men looked weary, propped up by a power that was not theirs, and their life was slowly fading. Eyes haggard, bodies slow, the toll of the time spend at this board, time without food or water, without respite, showing. They had lived longer than any human had a right to, and as soon as their task was fulfilled, they would fall down, whether on the table, or to the side, or backwards, dead.

She wrote and as she wrote, more tears poured out of her eyes, the drops making a puddle around her. This was scary, she had written the Story of Everything, well almost everything, and had never felt like this. And yet, now she was. She did not know if this was the Story of After. And yet, she was afraid. She looked up and saw her companions looking at her, silently, wordlessly. The tears on the floor, the items in her hand, things that could not be in this room. She remembered.